CFTC to Host Cryptocurrency CEO Forum to Discuss Digital Asset Market Pilot Program

April 17 — Pumpcade, a live prediction market and meme coin issuance platform, announced Wednesday it has closed a $5 million seed round, with backers including Jump Crypto and Foundation Capital, per official sources. The Solana-based platform integrates with the Pump.fun chat system, enabling one-click prediction market creation in live rooms. Earlier, on April 2, Pumpcade secured a $1 million pre-seed round led by Pump.fun.

April 17 — Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, speaking to reporters after attending the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Washington on Thursday, noted soaring energy prices are having a major impact—bringing both inflationary pressure and downside risks to economic growth. Kuroda emphasized policymakers’ challenge of addressing both inflation and the growth slowdown tied to the Middle East conflict. He did not clearly signal on interest rates ahead of this month’s policy decision. “That’s why policy responses are so difficult—there’s no easy blanket answer,” Kuroda said. This may be his final chance to signal to markets before the April 28 rate decision, where the BOJ will set its benchmark rate and release updated economic forecasts. Inflation projections are expected to rise, while growth forecasts will likely be cut. “Overall, we’ll choose the most appropriate steps to keep working toward our 2% inflation target, considering the impact’s pote

April 17th, official sources report that SpiderPool—ranked the world’s fifth-largest Bitcoin mining pool—has become the first to roll out Bitcoin Native Segwit Address Transport (NAT) distribution, officially kicking off a new era of dual-layer rewards in the industry. DMT-NAT (NAT) is the first Bitcoin native companion asset rooted in digital matter theory, sharing the same hashrate, blockchain, blocks, and addresses as BTC. Minted every 10 minutes in sync with Bitcoin blocks, it’s a native companion mining coin tied directly to Bitcoin. Currently, each block yields roughly 386 million NAT tokens, with a per-block value of around $38—translating to a total market cap of approximately $38 million. Block rewards will decrease gradually alongside hashrate difficulty and block height. Its code is fully open-source, and the mechanism is fair and transparent. NAT’s market cap is growing steadily, gradually helping miners cut operating costs: ? When per-block rewards hit $50,000 (eq

April 17th — On-chain analyst Ai (Twitter handle @ai_9684xtpa) reports that the “ETH ICO whale” holding 1 million ETH transferred 2,000 ETH to a multi-signature address roughly 8 hours ago, hinting at a possible intent to sell. Per reports, the recipient address is the whale’s “designated selling address,” where incoming ETH is consistently routed to OKX for liquidity replenishment. This transaction, valued at approximately $4.63 million in ETH, originated from address 0x2bf…E4087 — an address with a history of frequent interactions with blockchain builders BuilderNet and Titan Build.

As of April 17th, ORDI has surged to a high of $10.7, according to market data from HTX. It is currently trading at $10.09, up 177% over the past 24 hours.

April 17 – Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a social media statement early on the 17th, noting a Resistance Front commander has issued a severe, unprecedented warning to all commercial and military vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The warning reads: “Starting tomorrow at noon, anyone planning to transit the Strait of Hormuz must exercise extreme vigilance.” The statement adds the Strait of Hormuz is moving into a new phase of military tension.